EXHIBITION STATEMENT
The power of one form of art over another fascinates me. Many art forms — visual arts, literary arts, music — carry the influence of those that came before and it’s always exciting for me to discover the little pieces of one artist informing another.
For this exhibition, I invited a few visual artists and poets with whom I have worked in the hopes that their art would inspire one another to create. The artists and poets were given the opportunity to submit existing art and poetry. The art was sent to poets and poetry sent to the artists who selected poems or pieces of art that spoke to them from the submitted work. Participants were then asked to create a new piece of art—be it a visual art piece or poem—based on the original inspiration. All of the artists and poets that are participating in Art & Words rely heavily on visuals and I knew that pairing their art form with another would be successful. I wasn’t disappointed. Art & Words holds something for everyone in both visual and written forms.
I wish to personally thank the those that came together to make Art & Words one of my favorite exhibitions, and to those artists who brought my own poetry to life and to another level. I have been told by many artists and poets that they were challenged and that the project was a great creative reward. Please view the exhibition and spend some
time looking deep into both the poetry and artwork to see the connections made between the artists and poets. Hopefully you too will discover your own connections.
Robert P. Langdon, Curator
April 2020
(click on image for more information and to purchase)
Tina Piccolo
Poet In Ruins
Collage and oil on cradled wood
16" x 16"
Inspired by the poem Poet In Ruins
Jack Braunlein
Poet In Ruins (2020)
Acrylic on canvas on panel
12" x 12"
Inspired by the poem Poet In Ruins
Geta Badea
Il mio Giocondo
raw antique cotton, clear and white gesso, charcoal, pen, several types of gel medium and liquid glass medium, clear oil sticks, oils, marouflage(d) on wood cradled masonite panel
48" x 24.5"
Inspired by the poem Poet In Ruins
Painted on antique cotton weaved by my maternal grandma from cotton grown on their farm and weaved by her on a horizontal, manual loom built by grandpa. I remember, as a kid, her teaching me to weave on it for hours and hours and never get tired. I wish, I could bring that loom home, here but it probably was given away or even destroyed after their passing away. Both of my grandmas nowadays would have been hailed as great fabric and rug and tapestry weavers. Unfortunately, I never recognized their talent until I started painting! – Geta Badea
Poet In Ruins
a tormented soul
trapped in an ancient life,
as the world moves on,
tangled trees and vines,
allow themselves the liberty
to overtake her home,
oppressive icy stone wall,
and weathered wrought iron,
panes freed of their
leaded windows,
doors rusted open
like her pained heart,
she writes effortlessly
in the old style,
with a sharp feather,
and liquid as dark
as her scars
– © Michelle DeCicco
Geta Badea
La mia Gioconda — The Vain One
raw cotton, acrylics, watercolors, gesso, gel mediums, silver and shining reflecting mediums, charcoal, Stabilo pencils, oil sticks marouflage(d) on Masonite panel and wood cradles
51" x 26.5"
Inspired by the poem Vanity
Vanity
They found you sprawled across the bathroom floor.
Your wrinkled face brushing smooth tile.
You didn’t have time to put on your wig.
It was on your nightstand lovingly placed
atop the styrofoam stand-in awaiting tease and spray.
Did you forget about your appointment that morning?
If you had remembered, would you have kept your wig on,
wrapped it in toilet paper and slept on your back
with your hands folded over your bosom so your elbows
would keep you from rolling over onto your stomach?
If you had known, would you have made yourself pretty
to be made prettier the way you did before visiting the beauty parlor?
Applied mascara to your brittle lashes so that each time your gay
hairdresser flirted, they would appear strong and supple
when you batted them? Outlined your lips above their sagging crowns
and colored between the lines with the red of desire?
If you had known about your appointment today,
would you have put your life in order like the nail polish organized
by shade? Spent your last hours with your children and their children
offering one lasting hug and ‘I love you’?
Or would you have mixed yourself a Tom Collins and spent that time
looking into the mirror, fussing over yourself, and getting ready?
— © Robert P Langdon
Ann Morris
Proof (2020)
Paper collage and acrylic on board
12" x 12"
Inspired the poem The Hidden Sex
The Hidden Sex
Victims?
Hidden children, girls,
Innocence tower bound in their youth.
But, in their adolescence,
secretly practicing
Sun and Moon Goddess worship
Hands flung up
In close proximity
Creating spider web constellations
Mixing magic and menstruation
Sensuously in thrall with their own bodies
Growing the parts of them they could signal with.
Hair equals lust equals sin equals freedom
Princess or peasant the story starts the same
She was sin-sational slipping
Behind gauzy panels at the narrowest window
Rapunzel
Vocalizations of honey and musk
Lead to blinded eyes and
Dresses that need to be loosened
Saule freed by the Zodiac,
Left Scorpio crimson coloring the scene with lustful eyes
sledge swinging.
Rudaba lowered dark hair chains
Proposing Confidante chaperoned conversations
awakened love and defiance.
Petrosinella, proficient with poppies
Gold ladder beckoning
Repeatedly romancing the besotted prince
Someone is craving
Someone commits a crime
someone is sacrificed
the innocent are punished
someone is found
someone escapes
someone is left,
and there is a joining.
– © Natalie Boburka, 2020
Yvonne Rojas-Cowan
Catrina Selfie (2019)
Acrylic on canvas
12" x 12"
Inspired the poem Behind the Camera
Behind the Camera
When we were hearts
Our hearts were flowers
Dark Charged ribs
Encased such power
Priestess cool assessing gaze
Deity lost no offerings claimed
Smugly crowns her head raised
Hair spun wild coils inflamed.
Bird whisper shoulder and color glazed
Grows a garden and hides her pain
tattooed skin cloak pattern blazed
Camouflage magic and pretends she’s tamed.
– © Natalie Boburka, 2020
Yvonne Rojas-Cowan
Lost In the Colors of My Soul (2020)
Acrylic on canvas
20" x 19"
Inspired by the poem Come
Come
I’ve travelled through the shades of red —
the pink of birth and the blush of adolescence.
The candy of passion, the rose of love
and the scarlet stench of loss.
I’ve swayed with the blues all of my life —
the electric coolness of cobalt. The back and forth
mania of indigo calming itself down to an azure
and finally finding peace in the tranquility of periwinkle.
The yellows have always energized me —
they feed me the sun and keep me smiling. I have gone
one on one with butterscotch but can sometimes be a whole
grain mustard. I am part sour lemon part sappy honey. But all golden.
The greens have always been a challenge — I’ve protested
the army and hunters. Chopped the basils and mints.
My toes have been tickled by moss and my senses
titillated by chartreuse. The greens have been friend and foe.
But these days the colors are beginning to blend and create new hues.
My footprints have oxidized into a mixture of vibrancy and grey.
Darker patches streaking and stroking beckon me to come.
But they took that away from me. I can’t anymore.
— © Robert P. Langdon
Yvette Lewis
Memory of Singing (2020)
Acrylic on paper
20" x 13"
Inspired by the poem Clio's Song: A Prayer
Clioʼs Song: A Prayer
Come in you weary traveler and rest your mind awhile
Your offering is sweet and tender though
Born through a weary mile,
And I can restore your memory to things long lost in time,
And I will have you inscribe your thoughts in fine and measured line,
Then I will restring your lyre for you and tune to an ancient mode,
So you could sing your song for me before you head out on your road.
Much later in your travels, when Time and Road run out,
And you come back to me with your mind in clouds of doubt,
Then I will reveal the memory from those who have gone before
That shines yet bright and brilliant and will forever more.
And it will be a beacon to you still when your time and space upend For
the road goes on forever and the journey never ends.
— © Jack Braunlein
Loel Barr
Lemons (2020)
Digital photography
11" x 14"
Inspired by the poem Thoughts On Lemons As Mother Reads the New Yorker And the Cancer Is Still Only a Single Cell in Her Lungs
Thoughts on Lemons as Mother Reads the New Yorker
And the Cancer Is Still Only a Single Cell in Her Lung
Lemons sliced thin beside the penguin
ice bucket, Cinzano Vermouth, Gordon’s
Dry Gin. Slice me a lemon, Dear?
Mother’s hand raised as I hold the lemon
perfect in the palm of mine, rolling.
The evergreen orange citron mix
elliptic protruding nipple apex. Stacked
in yellow grocery bins trucked in from
leaves, thorned, spreading. Faintly pitted,
slightly ribbed fine-grained tender sunken
oil glands’ secret skin, bitter pith hidden
beneath. How could we know? Juice soaked
sections, flesh encased inside, yellow
radiating segments in a crystal dish. How
could we even ask? Returning with
Crusaders from Palestine, golden seeds
on Spanish sailing ships, have you watched
us these two thousand years your true home
unknown? They withhold water until you wilt,
then surge it through to induce a second bloom.
Can you hear the earthworms in silt and loam?
Do you fear crinkly leaf, heart rot, purple scab,
twist of witherlip, wild rabbits. What begins in
the universe of a singe cell, crooked atoms
that spin into endless black space? (I am
sometimes that little.) I sink my serrated
knife into feathery flesh pockets pitted
in the smudged shine. Fragrant glands burst
pungent, as Mother lights up another Lucky.
(Do you fear the smallest things?)
— © Anique Sara Taylor
Natalie Boburka
Dreaming of Lilith
Assemblage
38" x 18" x 16"
Inspired by the poem The Voice of Lilith
The Voice of Lilith
They teach you to fold linen napkins.
Place each one between salad and dinner
plate. Seat male next to female to male.
Spoon mousse into fluted crystal.
Press your father’s shirts, yoke first.
Then seam. Button facing. Cuff.
Match socks, warm from the dryer,
as if that is all there is.
They warn you of my needle talons
to kidnap children in the night.
To a place of thorns, thistles, nettles,
Owl shadows, where night birds gather
and no one has ever been so alone.
You sleep to the symphony of tree frogs,
from the swamp behind your house
as cocktail voices merge into midnights.
You race down dream hills into the wind,
to fly above broken branches as I whisper
into the solar system of your cells.
In the unfolded morning your shy mouth
sewn shut, your thirsty heart tries to
remember. They try to convince you
I don’t exist, afraid they will discover —
Each night, as the edge of suburban surface
fades and dark matter begins to form,
you pray for me to carry you away.
— © Anique Sara Taylor
Josepha Gutelius
Green Thumb (2020)
Acrylic on canvas
16" x 20"
Inspired by the poem Eden
Eden
This time
She was all thought and no action
Theoretically her faith in an actively
Peaceful Planet
had taken enough hits to be
spit out by now
Just a spreading stain on the pavement.
She began to look intently
for signs
of Spring
She could seal the deal
by feasting on bursting dandelions
and surreal daffodil visions
Spot an eagle and she could
last for a week.
If things got really bad
she could always
Walk
Naked and Serpentless
in the Garden.
— © Natalie Boburka
Josepha Gutelius
Blinded By the Light (2020)
Acrylic on canvas
16" x 20"
Inspired by the poem Blinded By the Light
Ellen McKay
Take My Hand (2020)
Acrylic on cradled panel
16" x 16"
Inspired by the poem Blinded By the Light
Blinded By the Light
Hold my hand
and we will make it through this world
of vivid colors
shadowed eyes
and caterpillar lashes.
This world that they want
us to join
of questioning morals
renegade artists
and wastely ways.
Stick with me
as we start our journey
but be aware. For they are out
to hook you with their promises
of democracy, freedom, and bikinis.
Keep your feet grounded and face covered
and do not expose your self.
For we will finish this passage
that our forefathers foretold.
And we will remain golden.
— © Robert P Langdon
Ellen McKay
New Map (2020)
Acrylic and charcoal on linen on cradled panel
20" x 24"
Inspired the poem
New Map: Haiku for Peggy Wright
My pathway tangled,
Then she gave me a new map.
Look! The page is blank!
My map gone, destroyed.
Who guides by moon, stars, or heart?
Blue angel flying!
Monday. Dogs baying.
Stillness hangs over rooftops,
There! Eagle in flight
Grey clouds move slowly
Wrapped in shrouds, a new burden,
What a gorgeous day!
Red maple outside
Today, bright, sunny, flaming,
I am a willow.
Shadows on my wall
She told me about the cave,
What’s that behind me?
If he is not here
How can I kill the Buddha?
Children are laughing.
— © Jack Braunlein
Jack Braunlein
Within the Sky Earth (2020)
Acrylic on paper
10.5" x 14.5"
Inspired the poem
Sky Within Earth
I am inside the earth. Am I buried? Am I covered by sack-cloth dirt, a mud-shroud
of my own making? I look up, openings give onto sky, clear blue, pale as a sigh,
a sigh of relief to see the outer world now made of Ether. Ether of my own making?
I could rise up from my grave and be counted among those who hear the call---to be
churned into peaks by strong hands, hands that pound me, thwack me down on the
table, roll me out flat, roll me up into coils, fold me, knead me pound me again until
I am solid, nary an air bubble left. So I won’t explode. It’s not over yet. Large hands of
my own making? Now what? I’m a mound of clay spinning on the wheel, deft fingers
pull me up little by little slippery slick coaxing my form, rounding my belly, narrowing
my neck, broadening my mouth. A gasp of surprise. Now I have curved walls, an inside.
I slide into the kiln, stand up in the heat as the fires rage. Fires of my own making? It’s
not over yet. I glow red in the blast. On and on and I am white hot, then pink. Now I
am cooling down. I can hold water. I can hold grain, flowers. What do you mean,
“there’s more”!? I thought I was done. A sigh of pleasure as the glazes flow cool over
my body. I am splashed, splattered, painted. At eight-hundred celsius flames dress me
in glass garments. I emerge, radiant, my drips hold depths, like water running down my
sides --waters of my own making? Called, I came to wear green and cream and yellow,
Sancai colors with small spaces left bare. Am I ready to accompany the living in their
daily ceremonies, honor the dead, buried with them— be a gift, bequeathed, lost,
remembered, unearthed, cherished? Have I become a real vessel? The water is cold;
the peonies, fragrant.
— © Ellen McKay
Ken Tannenbaum
Single Wide With View (2019)
Photography
21" x 17"
Inspired the poem crushed trust
crushed trust
the twinkle in your eyes
captured my heart
the words you whispered
spoke of my reveries
you promised me everything
i was blinded
i didn’t see
you mesmerized me into your dream
there was writing
on the walls
i couldn’t read
you wrapped me up
so very tightly
into your scheme
promises
that never materialized
promises
falsehoods disguised
you spoke of homes
and gardens
and me dripping in jewels
lots of kids in our yard
2 dogs, a cat and a bird
and for my quiet place
a she shed out back
the plans
for vacations
that never occurred
and when inquired
you claimed
me a shrew
disappointed
crushed
gave up
but you
with that twinkle in your eyes
whispered
dear
a surprise
pack your belongings
we move on the morrow
we drove
we drove
we drove for a week
far from a city
suburb or town
passing through
small villages
and many bare plots
envisioning
a castle
high on some hill
overlooking
a crystal-clear lake
rather than
ending here
his secret dream
in a trailer
with a view
— © gwynneth green